This weekend, I was practicing both my use of the tablet and Illustrator CS, trying out different stuff to get a better feel for the process overall. For one of my exercises, I took the Baker Books logo and traced it out with the pen tool.
From there, I started messing with it, adding a gradient around an expanded border to make it look like a coat of arms or something of that sort. It actually looked pretty neat. Every few changes, I’d save the file, to be sure nothing was lost.
I then added some text with the font tool, and Illustrator unexpectedly quit. Frustrated, I tried to reopen the file, but it gave an error saying that part of it was corrupted, and all that I was shown was a blank layer.
I could open the .AI file in Photoshop—which proves my graphic is still there—but it rasterizes it when I do that. Good thing this was just an exercise and not work for a client, or I would have gone half-mental. Since then, I uninstalled the program and put it back on, and (so far) no other problems have come up.
Laura has a couple of Illustrator books, so I’ve been looking through them, to make sure I’m not missing anything that would make my life easier. Book or no book, practice is the only thing that’s going to foster improvement.